The Haman Hoax

Jochen Katz

Structure:

[To fully understand the argument, it is important to read the various parts in their intended sequence. The reader is advised to start with the Introduction.]

Stage Three: Harun Yahya

Finally, I want to examine Harun Yahya’s version(s) of this particular argument. Yahya does not bring any new evidences or references into the discussion, but being one of the most active missionaries for Islam on the internet, he uses this issue mainly to draw people into Islam by claiming that it is one of the miracles that authenticates the Qur’an as a revelation from God.

Harun Yahya’s writings are spread over dozens of sites on the web and are available in more than a dozen languages, and there are even videos of his arguments in various languages.¹

I want to examine the two main versions of Harun Yahya’s Haman argument. In English, Version 1 is found here; Version 2 here (1, 2), and also as YouTube video. These are all under “Stage Three” of my examination of the Haman Hoax since Harun Yahya’s versions are clearly based on (the first version of) the article by Islamic Awareness, though he does not acknowledge this dependency.

Although Harun Yahya does not bring any additional evidence, in his missionary zeal, he manages to introduce a considerable number of additional false claims. Let’s start with the examination of his first text (Version 1, most likely published in the first half of 1999) which is one topic in a series of defences against the critics of the Qur’an. He writes:

This grossly inaccurate statement reveals that Yahya was using his source without understanding what it actually said. It exposes both his plagiarism and his ignorance. First, the name Haman is never mentioned in the Gospel. For Harun Yahya, the Bible seems to consist only of the Torah and the Gospel since “the Torah and the Gospel” are mentioned over and over again in the Qur’an. Therefore, if it is not in the Torah, then it has to be in the Gospel. But Haman is only mentioned in the Book of Esther, which is part of the Old Testament, and which existed long before Jesus was even born. Again, the Gospel(s) never refer(s) to the person of Haman.

Moreover, what does Yahya mean by stating that Haman was “a helper” of the Babylonian king? That is way too unspecific.² Haman was not dusting the king’s desk, taking out the trash or feeding the king’s horse. Haman was a top government official, a close advisor to the king, just like the Haman described in the Qur’an.

The most important point, however, is this: There are mainly two possible dates discussed for the Exodus: The second half of the 15^th century BC or some time in the 13^th century BC. To make calculations easy, let’s use 1450 and 1250 BC. Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) was king of Persia in 486-465 BC, for the sake of simplicity let’s take 450 BC. These approximate numbers, and using the earlier one of the above two dates for the Exodus, was the basis for my original statement that “Apart from the error in location, this is placing Pharaoh (Moses) and Haman in the same story even though they lived 1,000 years apart.” (Source)

How did Yahya arrive at 1,100 years between Moses and Xerxes I? Given that Moses lived about 40 years after the Exodus (i.e. until about 1400 or 1200 depending on which Exodus theory one wants to accept), and Xerxes I died in 465, that comes to about 950 or 750 years time difference, but certainly not 1,100 years. Or, adding 1,100 years to the time of Xerxes, Harun Yahya seems to say that Moses lived around 1550 BC. I don’t know anyone who would support such a date.

Moreover, Harun Yahya has written several articles about a number of related historical miracles regarding the story of Moses and Pharaoh in the Qur’an and managed to contradict himself several times in respect to the dating of these events. These multiple contradictions are discussed in the article “Amazing Qur’an or Amazing Gullibility?”

Back to our question: Where did these 1,100 years come from? Answer: Yahya copied them without understanding from Islamic Awareness which had written in the Introduction of their first edition:

But Islamic Awareness used this number in a different meaning. They mixed historical events and compositions of books to arrive at that number. They talked about the time span between the life of Pharaoh and the time when they believe that the book of Esther was written. Without stating this explicitly, they have decided to take the latest date given by critical scholars (ca. 135-104 BC; cf. point III.B.2. in this Introduction to the Book of Esther) and then adding 1,100 years results in their favoured date for the Exodus, around 1,210 BC. Harun Yahya did not understand what they were doing, and thought that “1,100 years after Pharaoh” referred to the events described in the Book of Esther, while the IA-team spoke about the time of composition of the Book, supposedly some 300 years later.

That is what I call mindless copying. Yahya simply took over that number and interpreted it wrongly, but he did not calculate where that would lead him, namely to an entirely impossible date for the time of Moses and Pharaoh. The real “miracle of Harun Yahya” is that there are thousands upon thousands of Muslims who uncritically believe his claims despite the fact that Yahya is so incredibly ignorant and sloppy in his arguments. Yahya continues:

Anyone who has read my above examination of the claims made by Bucaille and the team of authors at Islamic Awareness should be able to spot immediately that this is utterly wrong. First, the name Haman was not discovered anywhere, and certainly not 200 years ago. Yes, that was the time when the Rosetta Stone was deciphered and the scholars learned the meaning of the hieroglyphs. However, the first one who talked about having discovered “Haman” in hieroglyphs was Maurice Bucaille in 1994, and his claims are finally proven to be a fraud, a hoax.³

This is more or less correct. It is somewhat reformulated, but basically copied from the first version of the article by Islamic Awareness.

That happens when Yahya copies and slightly reformulates things which he does not understand. He copied even the erroneous blank in the name of the publisher of that book. It must be “J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung” without a blank after the apostrophe. But Islamic Awareness had (and still has) that typo in their article, so it was faithfully copied by Harun Yahya.

Incredible! According to Yahya, the name Haman is now no longer found only on a stela (as claimed by Bucaille and repeated by Islamic Awareness) but also in old Egyptian tablets, even several tablets, since Yahya uses the plural. In addition to those tablets it is mentioned on a monument “which now stands in the Hof Museum in Vienna”. Wow! So much ignorance, and so many false claims.

What tablets is Yahya talking about? He does not tell us. There are none. Yahya lied. And the “stela” of Bucaille has now become a monument to make it sound even more impressive. And how can this monument NOW stand in the Hof Museum in Vienna when there has not been a Museum by that name for more than 80 years? It was renamed soon after the end of the monarchy in Austria, in 1921 to be precise. And how does that door post “stand” there when it was actually not on display for many decades but stacked away in the archives of the museum? Yahya is entirely unencumbered by reality and simply makes up claims upon claims.

There are tons of errors again in just these few lines. First, this book was never published in English. Yahya invents an English title for this book that has nothing in common with the German title. The correct translation of the German title is: “The Egyptian Personal Names” and lists all Egyptian personal names covering 3000 years of history, not only the 500 years of the New Kingdom. Yahya even managed to corrupt the name of the author. His first name is Hermann, not Hermanne.⁴ Moreover, the name which Bucaille claims to be the quranic Haman is found only in volume one (Band I, page 240), and then again listed in the index in volume three (Band III, 1977, page 90), but not in Band II.⁵ Second, this book does not refer to Haman at all (see above). Third, it does nowhere speak about "the head of the quarry workers". Every single statement by Yahya is wrong, who copied most of it from Bucaille and/or Islamic Awareness without verifying their claims, and added some additional errors by inventing a new title for the dictionary.

First, there was no Haman apart from Bucaille’s fraudulent claim. Second, not even Bucaille had claimed as explicitly as Yahya that this man lived during the time of Moses. Bucaille only claimed that he was close to Pharaoh. There is no evidence for either claim. Neither the name of Moses nor the name of any Pharaoh, nor a relationship to Pharaoh are mentioned in the inscription. The only correct statement is that this man “dealt with construction of sorts”, but that is hardly enough, particularly when the name is wrong.

I agree, the Qur’an is in perfect unison with the false claims of Harun Yahya, but that is about all.

The only thing proven beyond doubt is that there are plenty of Muslim propagandists who don’t care for truth enough to verify claims made by others, and who don’t see any problem with publishing false claims in order to defend and advance Islam. Harun Yahya did not only take over the false claims by Bucaille and Islamic Awareness without cross-checking them against the sources, he also invented several more false claims, e.g. that the name Haman is found in (several) old Egyptian tablets and on a monument that NOW stands in the Hof Museum in Vienna, when there had not been a museum by that name for 80 years at the time when Yahya wrote his article.

Harun Yahya’s second version

A couple of years later, probably in 2004 (it was posted on 29 November 2004 on this forum), Yahya published a revised version of this miracle. It has done away with some of the mistakes in the first version, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Here is the text and my comments:

That is a mouthful of claims. So far, I am not aware that “the learned people of the world” have acknowledged the Qur’an as a viable source of information about ancient Egypt. Let Yahya produce just three names of leading scholars of Egyptology who publicly state that the Qur’an is a reliable source of information about Egypt. And Yahya’s last sentence in this paragraph is an incredible exaggeration. In recent years there have been thousands of discoveries in these three disciplines (science, history, archaeology) that have absolutely no correlation with the Qur’an. Even if Yahya could produce one or two such findings which are free from his usual logical errors and false claims, it still does not follow that therefore the Qur’an “correlates directly with ALL major scientific, historic and archaeological finds in recent times.” That is more than a logical fallacy.

That is a strange choice of words. The term “allies” means that they were equal partners in a struggle (like two sovereign nations that fight together in a war). But Haman was an advisor and top government official of Pharaoh. The Qur’an does not give the impression that Haman was an independent partner of Pharaoh, but he was his subordinate. Pharaoh gave orders to Haman.

Strange formulation again: It is not surprising that Haman is not mentioned in the Torah, it is surprising – and a considerable problem for the credibility of the Qur’an – that Haman is mentioned in the story of Moses and Pharaoh in the Qur’an, since he does not belong there.

Yahya at least fixed the embarrassing error that Haman is mentioned in the Gospel and now recognizes that it is actually in the Old Testament. However, he still has his designation of Haman as “the helper” of a Babylonian king. He neither identifies the king nor the Pharaoh, but still confidently claims that there were “approximately 1,100 years” between them. How does he know that if he can’t name either one of them? Obviously, the unacknowledged source is still the article of Islamic Awareness. And the number is still wrong.

Despite the strong claim in the last sentence above, Yahya has not provided any reference to any archaeological discovery which connects Haman with Moses, neither explicitly nor implicitly. This remains a claim without any support.

I am not aware that these criticisms have disappeared. They are as strong as ever since the claim that Haman was discovered is wrong. It is merely a Muslim hoax.

Moreover, Yahya’s formulations expose his ignorance at a most basic level. It is not “an Egyptian hieroglyphic script” as if there are many (just as people learn THE Arabic alphabet and not “AN Arabic alphabet”). And though it is true that the hieroglyphic writing system was deciphered about 200 years ago, Haman was not discovered in “the ancient scripts”. Which ancient scripts is Yahya talking about? Note the plural, even though he does not give evidence for even one such script. He probably means an “inscription” and not a “script” since a script is merely a “way of writing” but does not have any content itself.

These statements are more or less acceptable, apart from the fact that the correct word is “hieroglyphs” not “hieroglyphics”.

And the referenced footnote states:

Again, which inscriptions (plural!) is Yahya talking about? The book by Walter Wreszinski does not mention “Haman” anywhere. Yahya can’t even provide a page number for what he is talking about, because he probably never saw the book. And the entry of Wreszinski’s book that Bucaille hinted at does not mention any Pharaoh, so that it could not indicate a close relationship either. Yahya is merely a parrot repeating Bucaille’s false claims. Perhaps we should consider it progress that in his first version of the article Yahya had claimed about this inscription: “and in which the closeness of Haman to the Pharaoh was emphasized.” Now he writes: “This same inscription also indicated the close relationship between Haman and the Pharaoh.” So, with the change from “emphasized” to “indicated”, his false claim became a little weaker, i.e. less exaggerated, but it remains a false claim nonetheless.

The title of the dictionary is still wrong. What does “the entire collection of inscriptions” refer to? The inscriptions in the museum in Vienna? What is Yahya talking about? Moreover, as pointed out a couple of times already, this dictionary does neither speak of “Haman” nor does it say anything about "the head of stone quarry workers." Yahya probably never looked at this dictionary either. [For details of which book says what, see the discussion in Stage One and Two.]

In the associated footnote Yahya gives the bibliographical reference:

Yahya corrected the typo in the author’s first name, so that is positive. Interestingly, in the footnote Yahya provides a second English translation for the title of the dictionary, which is rather different from the one given in the main text. However, although the second translation in the footnote is better, it is still wrong. People did not have family names at that time. They simply had personal names, equivalent to our first names. The concept of a “family name” was introduced much later in history. It is a rather recent invention. Even Muhammad and the Arabs living in his time, about 1,800 – 2000 years after Moses, did not yet have family names.

Again, all of these statements are merely bold claims with absolutely no evidence to support them. Harun Yahya simply believed the hoax created by Bucaille and then propagated by Islamic Awareness and ran with it, adding several more exaggerated claims to it. Still, since he never cared to cross-check those claims against the sources, he makes himself an accomplice in the deception of Muslims and non-Muslims alike and shares in the guilt of misleading people into believing in the Qur’an against the available evidence.

Yahya’s worst claim is this: “The result revealed a very important truth: … Haman was a person who lived in Egypt at the time of the Prophet Musa”. Not only is the name of the person on this inscription not Haman, there is absolutely nothing in this inscription that can be connected to Moses. The name Moses does not appear on it, nor does it contain any other indirect hint that would allow it to be connected with the person of Moses. What is more, the inscription could not even be dated exactly, nor do we know where in Egypt it was found.⁶ On what basis, then, does Yahya make this claim?⁷

Yahya needs to answer this question: How come the Qur’an is in such amazing agreement with fraudulent claims and fabricated statements about Egyptian history? The Qur’an is in a pitiful state if Muslim scholars are in need of fabricating lies in order to defend the Qur’an against people who ask critical questions.

Harun Yahya added the following picture and caption to the article, stating:

Though this picture shows some construction workers, it has nothing to do with the inscription allegedly containing the name Haman. It would have been more useful if Yahya had provided an image of that inscription. Moreover, Yahya managed to introduce several more false statements in this caption.

First, he claims “The name “Haman” was not known until the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphics in the 19th century.” That is utterly silly. The name “Haman” has been in the Qur’an since the 7^th century, and in the Bible since at least the 2^nd century BC. If the name Haman had not been known until the decoding of the hieroglyphs, then Yahya could not have turned it into a miracle of the Qur’an. Ranke’s dictionary contains plenty of names that were truly unknown until the hieroglyphs were decoded, but Yahya is hardly interested in them. Yahya probably meant to say that this name was unknown in the relationship to Egypt until the decoding of the hieroglyphs, but that is not what he said. And even if he had said it, it would merely be a repetition of a false claim, since the name Haman has not been found in hieroglyphs even to this day.

Second, if that name had been found only in the Qur’an, it would not have been such a problem. The real problem is that this is the name of a very well-known person in the Bible which the author of the Qur’an transferred into the wrong story. In other words, the problem is not that the name Haman was not known, but that it was all too well known.

Third, the inscription under discussion here bears the name hmn-h, which is an abbreviated form of the name Hemen-hetep. It is impossible to read it as Haman.

Fourth, no relationship to the Pharaoh is mentioned in the inscription. The word Pharaoh does not appear in the inscription. That is an absolutely baseless claim.

Fifth, his professional title is not “the head of the stone quarries”, but “overseer of the stone-masons of Amun”. He was a leading employee at one of the temples of Amun, but not a member of Pharaoh’s government.

Harun Yahya’s miracle has dissolved into nothing. It is one of many Muslim hoaxes fabricated to keep the ignorant within the fold of Islam.